abookishtype's reviews
2442 reviews

The Propagandist by CECILE. DESPRAIRIES

challenging emotional informative mysterious reflective medium-paced

3.0

If one were to ask, flat out, what Lucie did during the war, she would lie to you. She lied to everyone, even her children, about what she did during the Second World War. Decades later, with Lucie and most of her contemporaries dead and gone, it’s impossible for her daughter, Coline to figure out what really happened. Coline is a stand-in for the author of The Propagandist, by French historian Cécile Desprairies. (Natasha Lehrer does an incredible job with the tricky French grammar of this book.) The Propagandist is a work of history and of autofiction...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss, for review consideration. 

Please Look After Mom by Kyung-sook Shin

challenging emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Shin Kyung-Sook’s novel, Please Look After Mom, is one of the most tragic books I have ever read. The characters are all flawed human beings, some deeply so. These flaws unintentionally collide when an elderly woman—a mother, a wife—goes missing in a Seoul subway station...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. 

Missy by Raghav Rao

emotional hopeful reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Missy’s life is divided into two unequal pieces. There is her youth in India and there is her much longer adulthood in the United States. The boundary between the two is a horrific crime and misunderstanding that sends Missy across the ocean. Raghav Rao’s entertaining and heartfelt novel, Missy, shows us both pieces of her life—the long shadow of past secrets and Missy’s determination to reinvent herself. Rao’s characters are lively, often funny, and incredibly headstrong...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. 

Little Deaths by Emma Flint

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Everyone has an opinion about Ruth Malone. A lot of women loathe her for her beauty and flirtatiousness. A few women look up to her as a model of confidence and independence. Most men lust after her. A few want to punish her for the way she refuses to be what they think of as a good wife and mother. And in Emma Flint’s chilling novel, Little Deaths, those would-be punishers finally have their chance...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. 

Haunt Sweet Home by Sarah Pinsker

emotional funny mysterious reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Mara Billings is the resentful butt of a lot of family jokes. Where her relatives have found spouses, jobs, and even a bit of fame (in the case of her cousin Jeremy), Mara has dropped out of college more than once and has no idea what she wants to do with her life. In Haunt Sweet Home, Sarah Pinsker’s unusual coming-of-age story, Mara finally gets an opportunity to come into her own, albeit on the set of a cheap reality TV show about haunted houses...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. 

The Hidden Book by Kirsty Manning

emotional informative fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

Have you ever seen a flip book? Most people have. Reading Kirsty Manning’s speedy novel, The Hidden Book, felt like reading a flip book. The chapters—and the characters, plot, etc.—race by and create more of an impression than a fully-fledged story. This is particularly disappointing because Manning used someone’s story to create this novel. The photo album at the heart of this book was created by Spanish photographers, Antonio García Alonso and Francesc Boix Campo, who were imprisoned at Mauthausen, and brought to Australia by Bodgan Ivanovic, another political prisoner. I have a lot of questions about Manning’s decisions...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. 

The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family by Jesselyn Cook

challenging dark emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

4.0

I’ve listened to the <i>QAA</i> podcast (formerly QAnon Anonymous) for years now. This podcast has always been my best source for at least knowing what QAnon and its companion conspiracies are. I can’t say that I <I>understand</i> people’s belief in QAnon but I am at least conversant in some of its tenets. My other source of information about QAnon is the heartbreaking subreddit forum, QAnon Casualties. In QAnon Casualties, people share their stories of family members, friends, and spouses becoming lost to conspiracy theories and conspiracy thinking. They ask each other for advice—mostly about how to get their loved ones back—and find community. I’m glad I had both of these resources to lean on as I listened to Jesselyn Cook’s new book, <I>The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family</i>. This book is a deep dive into the human costs of belief in the QAnon conspiracies. Cook interviews members of five families to examine the cost of losing a relative to what seems, from the outside, an entirely different reality.

<I>Read the rest of my review at <a href="https://www.abookishtype.com/2024/08/22/the-quiet-damage-by-jesselyn-cook/">A Bookish Type</a>.</i>

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Suicide attempt

The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk

challenging informative mysterious reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

In the years before a cure was available for tuberculosis, those who could afford it would retreat to sanatoriums in the mountains or somewhere where the air was supposed to be better. Patients could receive all kinds of treatments, ranging from enforced rest to hydrotherapy to whatever the doctors in charge could think up. None of this actually cured the patient; only antibiotics could do that. The Behmer Sanatorium, in the mountains of Silesia, seems to be one of the more benign sanatoriums until our protagonist, Mieczysław, starts to see hints that something sinister is going on among the townsfolk of Görbersdorf. In Olga Tokarczuk’s slow-burning new novel, The Empusium, we are treated to a strange blend of folk horror and historical fiction along with Mieczysław. This book is beautifully translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. 

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Content Warnings

Minor: Suicide

We Kept Her in the Cellar by W. R. Gorman

challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Blending families after a remarriage is always difficult and Eunice is right to be worried when her new stepfather and stepsister arrive at the beginning of the harrowing new novel from W.R. Gorman, We Kept Her in the Cellar. Eunice doesn’t just have to worry about her mother’s attention being split three ways instead of just two or differing disciplinary styles because it turns out that her sister, Cinderella, really is a monster...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. 

The Naming Song by Jedediah Berry

adventurous challenging emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

All words are made up. Some words—like a lol that you actually pronounce instead of just laughing out loud—are more made up than others. But in the world of Jedediah Berry’s The Naming Song, words have to be divined and delivered by officials. Generations ago the something fell from the something tree and the Silence wiped out all of the words from before. Our protagonist delivers words where they are needed (she famously delivered the word “trouble.”) and life rolls along just like the naphtha-powered train the diviners, namers, and others use to get from here to there. That is, it rolls along until our narrator has a couple of near-fatal meetings with the nameless and a conspiracy begins to appear...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.